Amen.&nbsp; I don't mean to slam the work of any web framework
developers, but you can't overestimate how much it helps just-beginning
web developers to see a unified framework, or at least a good website
that directs them to one particular way to do things.&nbsp; The python
frameworks are all too small to support much of a user community.&nbsp;
I personally had to pick PHP over Python a while back, partly for
reasons of documentation and support -- if the community unified more
around one or just a few frameworks, documentation and support would
start to be solved better.<br>
<br>
-Brendan<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/15/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Greg Wilson</b> &lt;<a href="mailto:gvwilson@cs.utoronto.ca">gvwilson@cs.utoronto.ca</a>&gt; wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
It's been a week now since my &quot;Just lost another one to Rails&quot; post,<br>in which I said that a buddy of mine down in the States was switching<br>to Ruby, after using Python for two years, because he and his<br>colleagues needed a lightweight, ready-out-of-the-box web app
<br>framework.&nbsp;&nbsp;Responses so far seem to fall into several camps:<br><br>- &quot;I agree completely, that's why I'm adding yet another framework to<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; the mix!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;(I'm waiting for someone to stand up at PyCon and say,
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Web App People's Front?&nbsp;&nbsp;We're the People's Front of Web Apps!&quot;)<br><br>- Sneering: &quot;Bah---Rails is impure!&nbsp;&nbsp;Unclean!&nbsp;&nbsp;We must keep our Python<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; pure and elegant!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Yeah... look how well that worked for Scheme.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; In my experience, most programmers value usefulness over elegance.)<br><br>- Whistling in the dark.&nbsp;&nbsp;For example, Ian Bicking said, &quot;...diversity<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; isn't so bad if we can just make a compelling infrastructure
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; experience.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I respectfully disagree: right now, the diversity in<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; this area is preventing any of the frameworks from becoming mature<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; enough to be credible among the &quot;I need to get it done now&quot;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; developers I talk to.&nbsp;&nbsp;(Quick, how many copies of &quot;Programming<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; WebWare/Twisted/CherryPy/whatever&quot; or &quot;The WW/T/CP/whatever<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; Cookbook&quot; are on pre-order?&nbsp;&nbsp;Probably 3500 less than the equivalent
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; RonR books.)<br><br>&nbsp;&nbsp; It also gives the impression of confusion and bickering, which is<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; lethal when you're trying to persuade someone in the commercial<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; world to adopt something that doesn't come with a 1-800 customer
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; support line.<br><br>- Frank acknowledgment of RonR's strengths (e.g. Peter Hunt's very<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; welcome post --- Peter, I would have thanked you directly, but I<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; didn't have an email address).<br><br>RonR is proof that new web app frameworks can displace existing tools
<br>like PHP.&nbsp;&nbsp;It's also proof that the existence of a lightweight ready-<br>out-of-the-box don't-have-to-install-eleven-packages-to-make-it-work<br>yes-the-tutorials-are-up-to-date no-you-don't-have-to-write-lots-of-<br>
idiosyncratic-XML-templates-or-configuration-files framework is<br>important enough that large numbers of programmers will choose (or<br>switch) their language on that basis alone.<br><br>So, any bets we'll still be moaning about this after PyCon'06?
<br><br>Greg<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Web-SIG mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Web-SIG@python.org">Web-SIG@python.org</a><br>Web SIG: <a href="http://www.python.org/sigs/web-sig">http://www.python.org/sigs/web-sig
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